


Fossils

by dewinter



Category: In the Flesh (TV)
Genre: M/M, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-24
Updated: 2014-09-24
Packaged: 2018-02-18 16:21:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2354840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dewinter/pseuds/dewinter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two boys, on a bed, listening to a CD.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fossils

They listened to it on Rick’s bed. Echoes of the past eight – no, nine – years, fossilising around them. At nine, sitting cross-legged facing each other, with a pile of _Star Wars_ Tazos in between their folded knees. At ten, side by side, not talking, their Game Boys bleeping cacophonously. Rick’s was second-hand, and scuffed round the edges, but it still worked well enough. Rick’s mum would bring them Jammie Dodgers and orange squash, and Kieren would taste the strange cocktail of chalky biscuits and synthetic jam in his mouth all afternoon, and his mum would tell him off for ruining his tea.

When they were twelve they knelt on the bed and leaned out of the window and shared, with a lot of poorly-suppressed coughing, the cigarette that had been crumpled in the bottom of Kieren’s bag for a week. Bill Macy didn’t catch them, but Kieren’s dad caught the lingering whiff of smoke on Kieren’s jacket when he got home and gave him the worst of parental speeches, the one about _disappointment._

At fifteen, sitting on Rick’s bed. Rick changing for footy. Five, six seconds between slipping his school shirt off and pulling his Giggs strip from three seasons ago over his head. Time enough to catalogue it all: the fading appendectomy scar, the wonky mole an inch below his left nipple, the bruise from last week’s practice that _still_ hadn’t disappeared, the thin trail of coarse hair disappearing into the waistband of his shorts. Rick’s hair would stick up, static, when he pulled his shirt over his head, and he’d say, ‘you coming to watch, loser?’ and Kieren would say, ‘nah, better get home. Better things to do than watch you embarrass yourself, anyway.’ And would think about how it was getting to be a problem. Kicking at pebbles on his way home.

They listened to the CD lying down. Kieren’s legs were too long and Rick’s shoulders too broad. Their hands were above their heads, picking at the textured wallpaper.

Kieren wanted to put Leonard Cohen on it, _I’d claw at your heart, I’d tear at your sheets, I’d say please. Please._ He didn’t, though. It was easier to let someone else do the talking for him, to save the words from getting stuck in his cowardly throat, but Leonard was too solemn, too obvious, he said too precisely what Kieren was thinking – had been thinking for two – no, three – years. And that wouldn’t do at all, at all.

So instead, they lay on Rick’s bed and listened to Ian Brown sing _I wanna be adored I wanna be adored,_ and the bikini-ed girls with their smoothed-out skin and coy, painted-on smiles looked down on them, eternal, frozen. Disapproving, probably. He should have let Rick listen to it alone. Then he wouldn’t have had this ache in his neck from where he’d been straining against the urge to look at Rick’s face.

Their hands were above their heads. Because he couldn’t see his hands, and because his arms were beginning to tingle numbly, the blood ambling its way to his fingertips, Kieren could pretend they weren’t his, that they were separate from him, disembodied. Wandering across the ragged wallpaper and lazily, _accidentally_ , across Rick’s Man U pillowcase until the little finger of his right hand was next to Rick’s curled-up left hand.

Rick shifted his hand until his little finger was hooked with Kieren’s, and Kieren let his too-long legs fall to the side, just enough that his knee was nudging Rick’s, and that was enough, that was more than enough, that was all his heart could take.

 


End file.
